


Reaper Man

by UnfortunateImplications



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Suicide mention, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, am i self projecting? yes i am, musical compliant, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 07:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11226279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnfortunateImplications/pseuds/UnfortunateImplications
Summary: William Angst TM, brief mentions of Grell, Alan, and Eric





	Reaper Man

Death has made him testy, has made him lash out even when he knows there are better ways to do things than strike his agents, he could choose to sit (that insufferable officer) down, talk things through, could find a compromise of sorts. He knows there is no universe in which this would work, it would only serve to spur the harassment further and would ultimately get nothing done. But it is a nice in theory if uneffective. Sometimes he thinks that perhaps both of them could be more reasonable than they are given credit for and could potentially coexist. But the years have proven otherwise and old habits die hard.

William knows this. It is why he is even here in the first place, living out a half existence in this limbo when everyone he had known has died.

He is young, by reaper standards, only a hundred years in service and nowhere near redemption. He is younger even than Sutcliff (another thing to which she will not admit to, and has convinced herself otherwise) and for all intents and purposes, he is. He looks it though he carries himself with the weight and the duties of a much older man. On bad days he feels old, older than he should given that when he faces himself in the mirrors that adorn the dispatch he still looks young enough to be unmarried. That much is clear, his face is still smooth save for the dent between his eyebrows that have become as much a part of his daily existence as Sutcliff and the headaches have. And despite his best efforts, he still looks like a young man who had been stunted in his growth, stopped before he could be whatever he was meant to be. He does not enjoy facing that young man in the mirrors in the morning.

On bad days he sometimes think that he was meant to be a reaper, its existence fits him too well, is too much of what he is but does not want to admit otherwise. It suits him better than life had, and it makes him sick. It makes him sick that out of all the things he could be best suited for, it is this cursed existence. It makes him sick to think that perhaps it is all he is. That there is nothing more to him beyond this. 

What he wants to be is dead. He had known it a hundred years ago and he knows it now. The worst thing about this existence, is that you cannot work yourself to death. It is not for lack of trying, he has tried numerous times. If he had not succeeded after a hundred years, perhaps it is impossible to succeed. Perhaps the only way out is for him to fail in his duties, as Slingby and Humphries had. To choose to be vulnerable. To choose to accept death at the hands of the vermin that stalk the living. 

But that much is out of the question. 

It is not an existence he enjoys. Anything but, he resents it. Death has made him testy, in life he had been quiet to the point of being overtly passive, in this limbo he finds himself lashing out. It is nice in theory to think that his circumstances have made him this way, but if he is being reasonable, he would have to admit to himself that he has always been this way. He had just convinced himself otherwise. 

He knows he has much longer to go before he is even close to redemption.

**Author's Note:**

> pretty sure this is just 605 words of me self projecting but anyway


End file.
